Happy to set you up with an account (email provided below) as soon as one become available (5/14 or sooner).

I only ask for your assessment on this tool – pros, cons and overall impression.

CMDLN (Central Minnesota Distance Learning Network) is one of the six regions that make up the LNM (Learning Network of Minnesota). The LNM Board is made up of MinnState and the UofM representatives. It is a State of Minnesota Grant funded organization connecting Higher Ed to Higher Ed and Higher Ed to K-12. Developed in 1995 to extend education throughout Minnesota. Core role today is connecting campus to campus with interactive video and audio.

Yes, CMDLN is paying for the Zoom Host accounts. SCSU is a member of CMDLN (1 of 8) giving them access to this Zoom account. Yes, as long as Zoom is working as well as it has, CMDLN will continue funding.

I do not see Zoom as competition with Adobe Connect, just another tool. Just as Skype or Cisco CMS.

Connect does not connect to the video codec classrooms (30 that CMDLN takes care of).

Adobe Connect does not currently connect to China without issues. We use Zoom for the SCSU-Binhai meetings.

Chosen to pilot upon recommendation from my colleagues in other states that are serving the same needs.

All that to say, Zoom is in a three year pilot for CMDLN members with interactive video needs.

95 percent of larger programs (those with 2,500 or more online program students) are “wholly asynchronous” while 1.5 percent are mainly or completely synchronous. About three-quarters (73 percent) of mid-sized programs (schools with between 500 and 2,499 online program students) and 62 percent of smaller programs are fully asynchronous.

The asynchronous nature of this kind of education may explain why threaded discussions turned up as the most commonly named teaching and learning technique, mentioned by 27.4 percent of respondents, closely followed by practice-based learning, listed by 27.3 percent of survey participants.

While the LMS plays a significant role in online programming, the report pointed to a distinct lack of references to “much-hyped innovations,” such as adaptive learning, competency-based education systems, simulation or game-based learning tools. (my note: my mouth run dry of repeating every time people start becoming orgasmic about LMS, D2L in particular)

four in 10 require the use of instructional design support, three in 10 use a team approach for online course design and one in 10 outsources the work. Overall, some 80 percent of larger programs use instructional design expertise.

In the smallest programs, instructional design support is treated as a “faculty option” for 53 percent of institutions. Another 18 percent expect faculty to develop their online courses independently. For 13 percent of mid-sized programs, the faculty do their development work independently; another 64 percent may choose whether or not to bring in instructional design help. (my note: this is the SCSU ‘case’)

Measuring Quality

Among the many possible quality metrics suggested by the researchers, the five adopted most frequently for internal monitoring were:

We’re working on a grant program at my unit to improve these lec-capture courses. One of the ways is to train faculty:

We’ve seen that these courses have very little student engagement, especially for online students for whom this is the main medium of instruction. It’s challenging for the instructors to keep the online student in mind as they teach their lec-capture class. This is not surprising, since they’re essentially being asked to teach 2 different audiences simultaneously – in class and online. However, given that this is not going to change in the near future for us, we’ve begun exploring ways to train faculty to do a better job given the constraints. Below are some ideas:

We are in the process of creating a sort of “checklist” to address things that can be done before, during, and after the class and ways of streamlining the process.

BEFORE

Make faculty familiar with the technology – do tours of rooms, tutorials, short workshops, etc.

Syllabus, Schedule and instructional materials are prepared before the semester begins.

Learning objectives, outcomes, and assessments are aligned and made transparent to the students.

Review a sampling of videos at the beginning, middle, and end by ourselves and then with the faculty and provide them feedback on the good, the bad, and the ugly – very discreetly. 🙂 It’s going to be a sort of a joint reflection on the class. We believe if we do this a few times with the faculty, they’ll get the message and will make greater effort to include the online student in their instruction. And doing it 3 times will also make visible the changes and progress they make (or not)

We also plan to survey the students at the beginning, middle, and at the end of the semester and share the results with the faculty.

Chunking of videos includes preplanning and post production tasks. Faculty can be trained to script their lectures more, create lecture based on “topics” to make chunking and tagging easier. Need to focus on end user experience (online student).

These are some of the ideas. We plan to start implementing them this summer. I’ll share with you our progress. 🙂

Thank you all for filling out the survey on the use of lecture capture in higher education. I appreciate your time and interest in this subject.

Attached are the results. I’ve also provided an overview below. The main purpose of this survey was to get an overall idea of how lecture capture is used in HE. I was just curious to see if the way we use it is pretty much similar at other institutions. The finding was inconclusive. My next step is to dig a little deeper – perhaps repurpose this survey for faculty and students. The final goal is to improve these courses – make them as pedagogically sound as possible, given that this technology is here to stay at our campus, at least for the near future. It will certainly require designing faculty training, but I would also like to explore innovative and efficient ways of chunking lecture videos pre and post production.

I’ve listed some of the findings that impressed me. They do not follow the order of the questions in the survey. For details, please view the attached report.

Just a quick note – There were 39 respondents, but not all responded to every question. The respondents included instructional and IT support staff and administrators at all levels generally from 4-year public and private universities.

FINDINGS & THEMES

Echo 365 and Panopto are the most frequently used lecture capture systems, but Adobe Connect also has several users.

The computer screen and the instructor feed are most commonly captured (89% and 79%, respectively). However, some also capture the document camera, the whiteboard, and the graphics pen tablet (53%, 39%, and 32%, respectively).

Almost every one (97%) report that they support their recordings with additional course materials in an LMS, while many also use web conferencing to deliver lectures and hold office hours. A sizeable portion of respondents also use online textbooks and publisher sites in their course delivery. Only 18% use lecture capture as the primary means of course delivery.

The majority of respondents use full class recordings of an hour or more, while around half also use short segments of 20 minutes or less.

The majority of the respondents seem to indicate a campus wide use of lecture capture for different purposes:

o review of in-class lectures

o training and advising

o student presentations (students use the technology to create their presentations/demos/assignments)

o live streaming of seminars and on-site hosting of conferences for remote students and audiences.

Size of the support units ranged from 1 person to 150+ people spread across campus.

Similarly, there was a wide range for the number of courses that used lecture capture – as few as 1-2 to a 1000 and more, if one takes into account non-traditional uses.

Although the numbers show that a majority (77%) provide full IT support for their lecture capture systems, a closer look at the comments indicates there is a general tendency toward making faculty more self reliant by providing them support when requested, or providing them with fully equipped and automated rooms, personal capture solutions and/or training.

Majority seemed satisfied with the lecture capture setup, so did the students. However, it seemed that the knowledge about student satisfaction was more anecdotal than formal. Other observations include:

o For people satisfied with the setup, there were quite a few users of Echo 360 and Panopto.

o Panopto seemed to rise above the rest for its promptness and quality of service. Mediasite got mixed response.

o There seems to be an awareness of the need to get the lectures captioned.

o Along with automated lecture capture technology, there seems to be a rise in old ways of doing things – manual (human) recording of events continues and seems preferable, especially in the face of rising costs of lecture capture technology.

The top 5 challenges concerning faculty support can be summarized as follows:

o Training faculty to use the technology – turn on the mic, no recording of white board, do not change settings, take time to learn the technology.

8 Ways to Use Google+ Hangouts for Your Business

Google+ Hangouts are a great way to hold group meetings, interact with customers, interview people and share your expertise.

For public Google+ Hangouts, you’ll want tochooseGoogle+ Hangouts on Air. Google+ Hangouts on Air allow you tohave up to 10 hosts in a live hangout that is publicly accessibleon Google+, your YouTube channel and your website. You canrecord hangouts directly to your YouTube channel for future use.

For private Google+ Hangouts,chooseGoogle+ Video Hangouts, which allow you tohave up to 10 participants in a video chat that is accessible only to the people invited.

(right now, SCSU pays license for Adobe Connect to do the same)

Use the UberConference app icon tocreate a conference call number that people can use to call in to the hangout if they’re unable to access the live video stream.

I am leading a project group that is looking into a synchronous solution for student to students and faculty to student interactions. We recently started to use Canvas for our LMS and slowly moving away from Bb. Many of the faculty were using Wimba for synchronous classes and moments. Now faculty and students are using a combination of Big Blue Button, Webex, Skype and Google hangouts. We are trying to find a single solution for this. Can anyone let me know what they are using at their school for synchronous classes or moments, student group work and virtual office hours. Thanks so much for your time…